


Poacher’s Delight

by Guede



Series: A Supernatural Rogue's Guide to Country Peerage [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Enlightenment, Alternate Universe - Historical, BAMF Sheriff Stilinski, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Cock & Ball Torture, Cock Warming, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Impact Play, M/M, Nipple Torture, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Riding Crops, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Temperature Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-06
Updated: 2017-07-06
Packaged: 2018-11-28 09:20:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11414910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: What’s clear is that Chris has no right to be hunting where he is, and John’s caught him red-handed.  But then it gets a little confusing.





	Poacher’s Delight

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended to be historically accurate regarding the seventeeth/eighteenth-ish century/Enlightenment Europe the same way that _A Knight's Tale_ was to the Middle Ages: going after the spirit, rather than the fact, with bucketloads of anachronisms on the way.

Admittedly, Chris is trespassing, but he still thinks that it’s unfair. “Look, I tried to explain, but if you’re going to be that unreasonable, you aren’t really giving me a lot of choice.”

The man who’d walked in on him disposing of a rogue maenad lets out a sarcastic bark of laughter, then heaves forward against the ropes.

He’s strong—the hemp burns across Chris’ palms before Chris gets hold of it again, and after some back-and-forth, Chris resorts to bracing his foot against the tree trunk in order to wrestle the man back into place. And even then, he’s panting for breath by the time the man gives up and finally slumps against the trunk.

“Sure, and I’m unreasonable when I go out for my son’s damned mushrooms and come across somebody cutting a dead woman in half,” the man mutters.

Chris pulls the ropes taut and the man grunts sharply, but when Chris cranes around the tree, he still sees them flexing plenty with each breath, so he figures it’s fine. Well, with a couple extra knots. For somebody with a velvet waistcoat that probably cost twice what Chris’ horse did, the man has stamina.

“It was necessary.” Chris stands back from the tree, rubbing his palms off against his hips and grimacing at the way they sting, and considers the rope as it creaks. Then he sighs and steps forward, and runs one more loop around the man and the tree. “I’m not going to expect you to understand, but it was.”

The man’s silent, and when Chris steps back from behind the tree, he’s watching Chris with narrow, wary eyes. In all honesty, Chris probably should have just knocked him out. 

Well, it’s not like Chris didn’t try, but he was still yanking the family broadsword out of the corpse and the man had rushed him a lot more like a tavern ruffian than like the nobleman he obviously is. So he’d had to abandon the sword and just go for a few wrestling moves plus a well-timed trip, and by then it wasn’t as if knocking the man out was going to keep him from seeing what Chris looks like.

Chris sighs again, looks at the bits of blue, sunny sky peeking through the forest cover, and just goes back over to the dead maenad, pushing his sleeves up as he goes. One of them keeps falling over and he growls in annoyance at it before realizing that it’d torn open in the fight.

This just isn’t his day, he thinks, opening up the rip so that he can just tie off the sleeve. Burnt oatmeal at the inn, detouring off the road to save some idiot from the maenad who didn’t even stop to gawk before running screaming off, and there goes his hopes of making the last day of the trading fair in the next city. He might as well just take his time burying the damned maenad.

Once he wipes off and stows the sword, his audience at least calms down. Still gives the ropes the odd tug—keeps making the branches rustle, throwing off Chris’ swing with the shovel—but otherwise the man settles back and watches without a word.

Fancy clothes rumpling up under the ropes, Chris notices in between spadefuls. This far out in the country they’re slightly less fond of piling up lace on a man till he turns into a walking advertisement for a milliner, but still, there’s enough that the strips of muscle showing in between are…are a contrast. Obviously, if the man’s good enough to have kept Chris teetering for a couple minutes, he’s got something under the clothes, but it’s one thing to get that in the frenetic chaos of a fight, and another thing to just…see it. Sliding out from under the fine linen, broad smooth muscle in an unexpectedly sunkissed shade.

The man clears his throat and Chris catches himself, then flicks his eyes up before he can catch _that_. Gets an amused look, and once he’s gotten over his embarrassment and just chalked it up to the damn _day_ , notes that the tan isn’t too uneven, almost the same shade between the chest and the neck. The blond hair’s got the paler streaks of someone who spends a lot of time ignoring fashion’s demand to hide under a parasol or a canopy, too.

“It’s a hunting estate,” the man points out. Cocks his head. He’s still pulling at the loops around his wrists, the ones crossing them back against his waist. “Takes work to keep it up, if you actually want a decent hunt on it.”

“Guess that’s why you’re out at such an ungodly hour,” Chris mutters, going back to the pit he’s digging.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the man frown. “It’s a good hour past lunch.”

“Well, the last time I was in one of those hunts, it took six hours just to move all the catering from the house.” Chris jabs the shovel into the bottom of the pit and hits something that thunks on him. He stumbles and just steadies himself against the shovel handle, then sucks in air and thinks that lunch wouldn’t be a bad idea right now.

Sure. And he’ll just offer the landowner who’s caught him in the middle of murder a cup of tea while he’s at it. He shakes his head at himself, swipes the sweat off his brow and the back of his neck, and then puts the shovel aside. Hole’s probably deep enough.

“What are you doing?” the man asks, just as Chris squats down next to the maenad’s lower half.

Chris looks up. The man is calm. Too calm to believe, really, his legs pushed straight out as if he’s leaning against the tree by choice, idly picking at one bound wrist. 

“Look, I’m not going anywhere, and yelling at you obviously isn’t going to stop you, so why not give me the explanation?” the man says, in a very reasonable tone. He shifts his weight, winces slightly as the ropes in turn strain over him, and then flexes his hips in an odd—and eye-drawing—wiggle till suddenly an expression of relief goes over his face. “Acorn.”

“Oh,” Chris says, glancing higher and confirming it is an oak he’s tied the man to. Then he shrugs and bends back down to grab each of the maenad’s ankles. He’s been tied to more uncomfortable things and an acorn digging into your ass isn’t going to do any permanent damage. “I’m pretty sure you’re not going to believe me.”

“Then it’s not like it hurts, and at least you’ll have your side on record,” the man says.

Chris snorts skeptically as he gives the maenad a yank. The body doesn’t move and he frowns, then makes a face at himself. Moving too slow, he thinks, bracing his heel against the ground and yanking again.

This time, the half-corpse comes up, and brings a big piece of turf with it. The soil’s not too deeply rooted yet and falls off in clumps from the back of the legs as Chris sways on one foot, then gets his balance back and swings the body into the pit. Then he hurries over to the other half, gets that up before it can put its roots down any further, and grabs up the bottle of olive oil he’d been planning to use for lunch. It’s going to be another week of bland meals, he thinks as he hastily shakes it out over the corpse.

“She’s a plant?” the man says, catching Chris as the bottle just finishes draining.

Chris looks up and finds the man looking at the maenad parts with a kind of grim, half-revolted interest. Which means all that calm isn’t coming from a taste for this sort of thing, and…it’s really irrelevant whether or not Chris is relieved by that. Or whether his side is on record.

And yet, he finds himself explaining anyway as he digs out his matches. “No, maenads just—they aren’t trees any more than one of those lizards that matches the bark is, it’s just camouflage. If you let them root, takes a day and a night and the next thing you know, that new tree’s going to step out behind you and take off your head.”

“Maenad,” the man repeats uncertainly.

He says something else too, but Chris doesn’t catch it over the hiss of the match, and then the immediate snarl of the fire that springs up when he drops the match into the pit. The heat’s more intense than Chris was expecting and he jerks back, then rubs his hand over his face. His skin feels tight and dry for a second, and then the sweat comes pouring back down from his hair.

The man calls to him again and he looks up, then sets back on his heels, feeling his muscles unwind as the flames already start to die down. That’s a maenad for you, no more substance in death than in life, when their only purpose is to spill enough blood to temporarily revive woodland gods that society’s sensibly rejected.

“My son was saying that the deaths matched up with the old calendar,” the man repeats, head cocked, eyes resting steady on Chris.

“Old calendar?” Chris says. He walks around the firepit, watching out for sparks, and then, when he starts to see white ash in between the flames, picks up the shovel to start filling the hole back in.

“Old Greek. He’s got a hobby,” the man says, moving around to peer at what Chris is doing.

Chris dumps another shovelful into the pit and then his sense catches up with him and he whirls around, shovel before him. The man looks at the shovel. He’s still too calm for Chris’ taste—tensed a little, shoulders back against the tree, but as Chris stalks over, he looks more exasperated than anything.

“You can put that down, it’s not like they’re giving any time soon,” the man says. Sighs, really, just about rolling his eyes even as he keeps them on the shovel. He shrugs his shoulders and then hisses between his teeth. Then twists one wrist around as far as his bonds will let it, straining up till he can snag a piece of his shirt between his fingers. He pulls it down so that Chris can see the raw pink stripe working around his bicep and part of his pectoral. “Just ruining my clothes, is all.”

“Well, then, you’ll forgive me if I want to see for myself,” Chris mutters.

He moves the shovel to the side but keeps a good grip on it as he reaches out and starts testing the give of the ropes. Some of them have loosened, explaining why the man could slide over, but it’s just the stretch of the hemp itself, Chris eventually decides. Cheap stuff that he should’ve checked over more closely, but it’s still not enough for the man to squirm out of. At least, not before Chris gets far enough away to not have to worry about it.

“Satisfied?” the man asks dryly, his breath warming the side of Chris’ face.

Chris hadn’t noticed how close they’d gotten, which is stupid of him. Even if the man can’t get free of the tree, it’s not as if he couldn’t potentially do Chris an injury at that range, and his eyes are blue and the roots of his hair are a soft brown, like heartwood.

And he isn’t exactly put off, says the way his gaze is moving over Chris’ face. He shifts against the ropes again, but up instead of sideways, his chest expanding against them with breath and rubbing the hemp into Chris’ front. Prickly, Chris thinks, breathing carefully himself. “Not sure you should be asking _me_ that.”

“Well, not sure I’m in a position to ask anybody else,” the man says. He twists again and his knuckles graze at the dipped fold of Chris’ shirt, where it’s pulled out of his trousers. Then his fingers unfold, tapping at Chris’ belt buckle as Chris suddenly snorts, jerks his head aside to hide the smile. “Something funny?”

“Just I wasn’t going to leave you tied up anyway,” Chris says. He glances at the shovel in his hand, then shrugs and drops it to the side. No salvaging the day, really, and as he straightens up, he pushes his hand past the man’s shoulder and against the tree trunk so he’s got support as he leans into the man.

Muscle, all right. Enough of it to make a firm cushion as the man exhales right in Chris’ face, a little shaky, his fingers suddenly gripping at Chris’ belt as Chris tries the edge of his hip against that swell in the man’s breeches. “Appreciate it,” the man says, voice dropping. He tilts his head forward and their mouths miss each other at the last moment, but the scrape of his stubble against Chris’ jaw, a rash that just keeps burning, makes Chris bite his lip. “Not that that’s going to make it better when I catch up with you.”

Chris blinks hard. Then pulls back off the man to look sharply at him, and the son of a bitch just smiles at him. “That—do you have any idea how many she would’ve killed—”

“Oh, hell, I believe you about her, we’ve seen enough of the wake she left,” the man says dismissively, and then— _shit_ , but he still has Chris’ belt and he’s strong enough, even tied up, to wrench Chris off-balance and back against him. “I mean about this bullshit, coming into the damn woods when you have no right to be here and tying me to the damn tree and then just acting as if you couldn’t help it—”

“Well, it was for your own good,” Chris snaps back, and the man goddamn smiles at him again.

Chris has a contrary streak. People think he’s a good, keep-his-head-down, follow-the-rules type, but if that was all, he never would’ve leave his family’s ways. And right now, looking at this grinning bastard, who thinks he’s goddamn _caught_ something—

Halfway onto his knees, it occurs to Chris that he didn’t tie the man’s legs and he could very well be taking a boot or a knee to the face. It’s a stupid idea.

He does it anyway. Twists out of the man’s grip, drops down, leaves those fingers dangling after him. There are red marks where the buckle caught, Chris glimpses, and he darts forward and sucks at one, just as the man’s jerking against the rope and cursing at him.

The man stops cursing. And jerking. And then starts up again as Chris turns his head, takes that finger down to the hilt, flattening his tongue along the underside till he’s flicking the tip against the rough pads at the base of the finger. The man stares at him, eyes hot as the ash in the pit behind them, and then Chris drags open his breeches and the man throws his head back even before Chris gets his mouth around him.

It’s a good cock. Good length, good stretch to get around, corners of Chris’ lips burning a little as he chokes it down, swallowing roughly to get past the spasms. He shouldn’t be rushing something like that, should be enjoying it. Tasting that slight salt whisking over his tongue. Pressing his head up and breathing in the whiff of leather, letting the hair curling around the bottom of the cock tickle his nose. It’s so far it’s almost white—white-gold, paler than his own, he thinks, and God, but the idea of comparing makes him moan.

“You goddamn _shit_ ,” the man hisses at him, choking too.

Chris moans again, planned this time, and feels the man’s fingers swipe helplessly at his hair, ropes keeping them too high for a full grab. He works his tongue around the head, cupping it around the flare of it, then presses the cock head between it and the roof of his mouth as the man bucks into him. Has to slide his hands up and force the man back against the tree, not wanting his head beat in, and even then, even with the ropes and his own strength, it’s a close call.

“You—you really think—won’t take it out of your hide—” The man’s still going, voice hoarse, barely making it above a whisper, but the roughness of it makes Chris’ hips jerk, has him grinding up against the man’s leg as precome squeezes out over his tongue, slicks it with a desire for more. “—get hands on you—”

Hands. Fluttering at Chris’ hair, that’s where they are, and still Chris thinks he feels them press down his back, just hard and _pressing_ and he cants himself against the man’s boot and his trousers are damp by the time the man comes.

They both slump against the tree for a few minutes afterward, catching their breath. The ground’s soft and moist in Chris’ hand, where he’s dug up a clump of it without realizing.

He opens his fingers and drops it, and then rubs his palm clean against his hip. Then reaches between the man’s legs and pushes off against the tree, getting to his feet. He’s shaky. When he lifts his head and sees the way the man’s looking at him, weary but still, promising and _meaning_ it, he thinks for a moment. He’s going to miss the fair anyway.

But he has other obligations besides that, he thinks regretfully, as he takes out his knife and nocks one rope just enough. “If you get hands on me,” he says.

The man’s eyes narrow slightly. Then turn amused, just as suddenly, and the man settles back against the tree as if he could wait all day. “Sure,” he says. “John, by the way.”

Chris stops halfway back to the pit. He gets to turning half around, then gives himself a hard shake. Puts his hand up to the side of his head and thinks that he’s never, ever coming this way again, not if he knows what’s good for him.

“Sure,” he says back, and then shrugs off the question he can feel burning into his back. “Leave it for next time.”

* * *

Several weeks later, and a good county away, Chris turns over on his bedroll and opens his eyes and finds himself looking at a boot.

Good leather, no cracks in it, the velvet look of one that’s been maintained even before the faint scent of oil hits Chris’ nose. But well-worn, not stiff, with curves in it that speak to long hours bending the leather to shape. And it’s right where usually, Chris has a knife.

Chris looks up and then swears, which amuses the man he’d tied to a tree and sucked off to no end. “We were just visiting for the week,” the man says, as he stabs the end of a riding crop down on Chris’ wrist when Chris tries to move. “ _This_ is actually the family estate.”

“Shit,” Chris says.

The man shrugs, and then just…stands there, with his crop pushing into Chris’ wrist. The first sting of it starts to fade and after that, it’s not like the little leather tab is going to hold Chris in place. On the other hand, Chris might have his lapses of madness, but he’s not generally foolhardy.

John, Chris remembers. That’s his name. He keeps standing over Chris, regarding Chris with a kind of expectation that makes Chris flush and barely keep from twitching against the bedroll, and Chris ends up having to look away. Back behind the man, between and around his boots.

His things are out of place, but that’s because they’ve been packed up for him. They’re sitting over on the other side of the remains of the fire he’d built for the night, which has already had earth thrown over it, except for one leather sack that’s been dropped carelessly a few feet from his head. Well, at least it looks careless, at first, how the mouth of the sack gapes open at him, and then John sighs and the tip of the crop swings over to tap lightly under Chris’ chin.

“Get up on your knees,” John says.

Chris glances at him. Notes the pistol at John’s waist, and how the handle has grooves in it worn just as soft-looking as the boot, and damn it, but the frisson that dances under Chris’ skin really doesn’t have a damn thing to do with fear. Which makes Chris an even bigger idiot than the last time they ran into each other.

He finishes his roll onto his belly, John stepping back to make room, and then puts his palms out flat against the ground as he pushes himself up.

“Strip,” John says.

Less lace this time, Chris idly observes, taking glimpses as he pulls his shirt up over his head. No velvet. Linen looks just as expensive but doesn’t have all the embroidery, and it doesn’t have the stiffness of something only worn once.

“I was _visiting_ ,” John says, a hint of exasperation in his voice, and then he smiles when Chris looks at him. “For a hunter, your face is as easy to read as my son’s when he’s been mucking about where he’s not supposed to.”

Chris doesn’t answer that. Just pushes his trousers down his hips, then shifts from knee to knee as he pulls them off. Which is all for his clothes—it was a warm night, and he’d been sure the woods around here were clear of any dangers. Of course, he hadn’t been checking for goddamn sneaky noblemen.

John toes over the empty sack and Chris stuffs his clothes into it. He’s about to fold up his boots when John clears his throat, then shakes his head. “Back on. You’ll appreciate it later. And no, I did take out the knives.”

“Right,” Chris mutters, but he pulls his boots back on, giving each an absent tug to make sure they’re snug over the knee.

Then he has to get up, naked aside from his boots, and John marches him a few yards into the woods before suddenly planting a hand between his shoulderblades and shoving.

It’s timed so that a root catches Chris’ bootheel and skews him into a tree trunk. He gets his chin over just before he would’ve taken a crack at it, hissing as the bark scrapes his full front, and then sighs as a rope snakes around his right wrist. “You’re really holding _that_ against me? That was the fairest part of the whole—”

Another rope loops around his other wrist and then John yanks on both of them at the same time. Chris had thought he was already hugging the tree, but he gets dragged a half-inch closer, and a half-inch rawer. A bole or something like that snags his left nipple and he hisses, arching his belly to try and get himself off it, only to have John lasso rope around his left thigh and force him flush. The bole jams into his nipple again and his eyes would be watering from that, if they weren’t already watering from the rasping his cock and balls have taken.

“No, fights are fair game, you use whatever you have,” John says, while he’s strapping Chris’ right thigh flat against the tree. He pulls the ropes tight enough that Chris has to rise on the balls of his feet, straddling the trunk, and then walks around behind Chris. “Should’ve realized you were going for that root, but you can’t blame me for getting distracted by the sword.”

“What kind of man runs _towards_ a sword, anyway?” Chris mutters.

He senses movement closing in on him and instinctively tightens up, biting back the wince as the bark rubs over his nipples, only to…sag, surprised, when all that happens is a palm floats lightly on his back, centered between his shoulderblades. 

“I knew it was stuck,” John says.

Chris rolls his eyes at the trunk. “Still not a good idea. You’re lucky I wasn’t really interested in killing you.”

The palm is warm. Rougher than a nobleman’s should be, but then, why Chris would be surprised by that…and it moves up a little, stroking onto his nape, fingers just curling so there’s the ghost of a hold on his neck. He sucks in his breath and raw or not, he knows his nipples are hardening up. Standing on his toes keeps him off-balance, so he can’t fully rely on the tree for support, and when he sways, his balls slip down enough to swing a little with him. They feel oddly heavy, and as he breathes again, the heaviness seems to increase, encouraging him to drag against the ropes.

“I noticed,” is all John says, and then the crop cuts across Chris’ right buttock.

All the air explodes out of Chris. He hugs the tree, skin-biting bark be damned, and John gets in a second blow before Chris can get hold of himself. It’s worse—the first one was mostly shock, but the second’s all scorching heat, radiating out over Chris’ hip and around to his groin as if somebody’s clapped a hand made of red-hot iron to him.

It’s not like Chris hasn’t taken a whipping before. He knows how to breathe with it, and when he hears the whistle of the third blow, he forces himself to inhale, hold it, let it out with the burn so the coolness passing through his mouth will take away some of the heat. But he’s still shaky—maybe it’s missing breakfast. Maybe it’s the bark, biting at his sensitive spots whenever he shifts.

Maybe it’s the damn way that John makes a low, considering noise in between each blow, like he’s sucking his tongue back against his teeth, and Chris pictures it, warm pink tongue, and forgets to breathe and then ends up groaning into the tree as the burn creeps up his back.

Five lashes to one buttock, five to the other, and then the flat of the crop tip pushes into the small of his back. “Trespassing.”

“Wasn’t even your land,” Chris mutters.

John laughs and Chris didn’t even hear him, but John’s right up behind him. Mouth on Chris’ nape, shit, warm and wet and then the edge of teeth as Chris shudders and feels the weave of John’s breeches against his welted ass as if it’s sandpaper. “Poaching.”

When he steps back, puts another five across Chris’ back, over the ribs where the lack of padding puts a sobbing catch in Chris’ voice, Chris doesn’t even attempt to not writhe against the tree. “She was killing people, damn it.”

“I didn’t say _killing_ , did I? The part that’s a crime about poaching is doing it without permission,” John says, just enough aggravation in his voice that Chris starts to look over his shoulder at him.

Five over the other side of ribs and Chris is hanging from the ropes, watery knees clutching bonelessly around the trunk. “ _Shit_ ,” Chris finally grunts. He takes a breath that seems to take an age, and an age’s worth of effort, to get into himself. “You are. You are holding. Holding it against me.”

“Well, you tied me to a damn tree and then left,” John says, stepping close again, and God, his mouth. Soft and warm, warm like comfort as it lips at the fresh welts, follows them along the ribs as his hands run up and down Chris’ shaking thighs, lending them strength. “Didn’t even introduce yourself.”

Chris hitches himself against the tree. Compared to the raging inferno that’s his back and ass, the nips of the bark against his front are gentle tugs back to earth, pulling him through the haze that’s descended. That’s still coming down, thicker and thicker, till it clots in his open mouth as he sucks at the tree, tastes resin and vegetal dampness, moaning along with the mouth pouring sweet oil onto his fiery wounds. “For…for…for being _rude_?”

John chuckles, tip of his nose catching a welt, and then rounds Chris’ buttocks in both hands as Chris shudders. “Not like you’ve learned that lesson, so far.”

Then his mouth closes over the whole breadth of a welt. He’s right on the steepest part of the buttock’s curve and Chris’ squirming feeds it into him, but Chris can’t help himself, pressing back even as a thumb slips under the lips, probes the welt for lips to spread out the bruising.

“Shit,” Chris moans. “ _Shit_. Shit, shit, shit…fine. Fine, fine, I’m—I’m sor—please.”

John stops nursing at his ass. Doesn’t go far, just sits back and watches as Chris continues to writhe, too out of breath to beg but not too out of breath for that. Fingertips touch the back of Chris’ thigh, resting there, riding Chris’ increasingly weak struggles.

Then John gets up, grunting. Comes around and unties Chris from the tree. Slow, so Chris has time to slump down onto one knee, then onto his hands too. Then he reties Chris’ wrists in front of him and gives the makeshift leash a tug.

Chris looks up and the sweat in his eyes makes the man blur, dance with color like light through a mist. He thinks John’s smirking at him.

“Said you were going to need the boots,” John says, before turning around.

He doesn’t give Chris another breather, but just goes so that Chris has to stumble after him, half-doubled over and gasping. They head back to Chris’ campsite, where Chris collapses on his knees for a few minutes while John loads Chris’ bags onto Chris’ horse, and then John pulls him back up and makes him walk.

It’s probably not as far as it feels, seeing as the sun doesn’t seem to shift position any, but by the time they emerge from the woods into the back of a stable, Chris has no legs left. One more stumble sends his knees rocketing towards cobblestones and he doesn’t even care that he’ll break them.

“Hell,” John says, catching him around the waist.

Says something else too, but Chris isn’t listening. Just dangling like a limp rag as John wrestles him across the courtyard, kicks something out of the way, and then deposits him into some kind of metal trencher. Probably for watering the horses, and it’s still got about an inch of sweetly icy water in it, and when John leaves him to it, Chris shamelessly sags onto his belly and sucks down draught after draught.

“You were a horse, you’d give yourself colic.” John’s back, standing over the trencher.

The water’s revived Chris enough so that he can lift his head over the edge, and look up, just as John turns and reaches out and pumps a handle that sends a freezing wash of water over Chris’ back. It’s so cold that it feels hot, and there’s enough of it coming down that it mostly drowns out Chris’ gut-shot shout.

John pumps the handle again, and then a third time. And then he squats down and grabs Chris under the chin, holding Chris’ head up as Chris shivers, feet rattling against the trencher, arms tucked in so close that without John’s hand, they wouldn’t be able to keep his head up.

“Fuck,” Chris finally mutters.

The other man flicks a glance down him, and he’s so chilled now he can’t feel his welts, can’t even feel his goddamn nipples and cock, but he feels the sweep of that look. Then John kneels up and bends over the trencher, and flops Chris out like a landed fish.

There’s a blanket down, something soft over the cobblestones so Chris can knead at it like a kitten as John mops him with a wad of cloth. Chris’ own shirt, he realizes, just as feeling starts to come back and a rougher pass of the wad over his chest makes him start and flinch back. Right into the other man, who’s behind him. On purpose.

“Up,” John says, hauling on Chris’ shoulder. He sits Chris up and Chris watches, still too numb to resist, as a knife slices through the rope around his wrists.

Chris is free for all of the time it takes for John to swing his arms around behind him, and then he’s tied up again. With a strip of leather, he thinks, something less scratchy tightening around his wrists. His skin’s still half-dead but it feels as well-worked as John’s boots look. “You hunt a lot?”

The flash of John’s grin as he twists around, settles in front of Chris, one hand on either of Chris’ thighs, leaves a charge in the air that prickles on Chris’ tongue, as he pants in the man’s face. 

“It’s a working estate,” he says, pushing Chris’ legs apart. Then, casual as lifting his catch for the day, he cups his hand under Chris’ cock and balls and hefts them. His hand’s just short of fire against the cold flesh and the sparking seeds of pain are beginning to make themselves felt in Chris’ ass, as Chris squirms in place. “You were pretty close back there. Thought you’d go before I got you off the tree.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Chris says, staring at John. His knees draw in, on instinct, and John gives them an easy shove back into place before coming up with another leather strip. “I’ve been in those woods for goddamn days.”

“Three. I know,” John says, holding Chris’ gaze.

Chris draws his breath between his teeth, up against the roof of his mouth, folding the air till it’s painful, and then he shudders and watches John tie him up. Couple loops around the base, criss-cross up the length, pretty diamond patterns, and then another couple loops behind the flared head. His cock’s still shriveled from the ice bath but he can feel pressure, can feel the way the leather holds him in. He rocks on his ass and John takes his thighs, and pulls, and Chris goes down on his back, moaning.

“Shave this, later, so the hairs don’t catch,” John says, rolling Chris’ balls against his palm. He sounds meditative but when Chris lolls his head around, the look on his face isn’t thinking about it. “Maybe. You already clean up a lot, under all that piss and snarl.”

“Fuck,” Chris mutters, while his balls get bundled up too. “Because I fucking tied you to a tree?”

“No, because you did this.” And John rises up, just long enough for them to meet eyes, before ducking down and mouthing all the heat all at once back into Chris’ cock.

Still massaging Chris’ balls, too, tugging them down whenever they try to tense up, like the leather wrapped around them wouldn’t stop that. Chris arches over his bound hands and feels the throb of his cock head against the flat of John’s tongue go all the way up into his skull, into the backs of his rolling eyes. It’s good and it’s hard and it’s not enough, and deep down, if he’s honest, if John actually backed off now, didn’t see it all the way through, he thinks he’d hate the man for it. You start something like this, go through that trouble, you should see it to the end.

John doesn’t back off. John takes his time, leisurely, tasting the different parts of Chris’ cock like Chris sometimes dreamed about doing, afterward. Goddamn enjoying himself. His tongue traces the diamonds out against Chris’ futilely-twitching cock, then glides through the sweat-matted hair of Chris’ groin. Rides up higher, over the mad flex of Chris’ belly, and then curls itself around one of Chris’ nipples. Then the other. Then the first again, while those broad rough palms slide up under Chris’ ass and squeeze till the welts pop white bursts against Chris’ closed eyes.

“—please, God, please, I won’t, I won’t, just—never again, I swear,” is spilling out of Chris’ mouth, when John finally backs off.

Hunched over him. Sweaty too, Chris notices, the way you’d notice the glint off metal in the distance. A lock of hair stuck across his brow, a bitten look to his lips. “Fuck, I hope you damn well do, I haven’t had my cock sucked like that in years,” John grunts. He pauses, then grins and his thumb runs over Chris’ lip. “Could do without being tied to the tree.”

“Whatever—whatever you want,” Chris says, meaning it.

John kisses him. It’s sweet. And slow, and soft, and feels like it reaches into Chris’ gut and wrenches up all the roots, and when John pushes off again, Chris exhales like he’s been under the sea.

Twin tugs make him look down, and he’s still staring at the thin little leather thongs bowtied around his nipples when John picks him up. Off the ground, over one shoulder, and Chris’ head swims and just when it stops swimming, he’s swung again and they’re inside the stable.

“Stiles is supposed to come back at some point. Probably got distracted by spoor but I want a door, at least,” John says conversationally, shutting said door. He pulls off his shirt, takes off his belt, pushes down his breeches, all in the time it takes for Chris to lever himself up against the table John put him on. Dips for a second and comes back up with a bottle that he uses to slick up his fingers. Then he comes to the edge of the table and looks at Chris, rubbing his fingers together, light slanting through the wood slats and making the oil on their tips gleam. “My son.”

“Spoor?” Chris mumbles.

John tilts his head. “Chris Argent, right?”

Chris freezes. Bruises and welts and aching, denied cock be damned, _that_ gets through.

“Same man who flooded a churchyard?” John says. Still looking at Chris the same way. Not even surprised about how Chris exhales slowly. “Caved in crypts all over the country? Keeps turning up on people’s bonfire nights, when those bonfires get out of control? Thirteen of them, last count?”

“Twelve,” Chris says. Whispers, really, and then, when John keeps looking, he forces his chin up. That—that grin flashes again and Chris shivers and his knees sway. They’re headed apart anyway, and then he breathes again and spreads them on purpose, as John finally leans over, slides a palm under his ass again and hikes him forward. “Twelve. That first one, that was my sister, and it wasn’t—”

“You helped kill her, didn’t you?” John says. His thumb rubs small circles along the crease of Chris’ thigh before his fingertips curl in, push the buttock out of the way as his other hand presses in and rubs an oiled finger up against Chris’ hole.

Chris lets out a long, shuddering breath, his shoulders thumping against the table. When he’s breached, he can’t help crying out, even though it doesn’t hurt. God, it wouldn’t hurt now at this point, with his beaten ass and back, his tied up cock, his sore nipples. It’s just—so goddamn long, he thinks dazedly, rocking back onto John’s finger. He can’t stop now, even if John’s asking. Especially, he suddenly realizes, because John’s asking. “Yes—yes, that was me.”

“And the whole mess upcountry with the monastery,” John says. He’s—he’s _laughing_ now, laughing and working at Chris, opening him up and his breath’s at Chris’ throat again and Chris moans and feels a mouth running along his jaw. “And the haunted boat, how did that—”

“I told them to goddamn weigh anchor,” Chris hisses. Then chokes on the hiss, as he’s pulled down onto John’s cock. He thumps his head against the table. Lies there, slack, and then sheer need twists him from side to side as he’s fucked into, steady, a thumbpad working at the head of his cock so that his actual head seems about to explode with every breath. “Yes, me, and the—tommyknockers in the mine, and twenty-two vampires, and the demon bride, God, I wasn’t even supposed to _stay_ in that town, damned washed-out bridge, and God, God, John, please, I’ll tell you, I just—”

“Sure, next time,” John says, and the finality in his tone makes Chris shake his head so hard that Chris slaps his cheekbone against the table because no, no, Chris can’t wait, can’t walk off again—

John frees his cock, and lets him come.

The world returns to Chris in stages of ache. His shoulderblades and the backs of his ribs. The meat of his buttocks, pulsing in stripes. His nipples. His elbows, when he flexes them and realizes his wrists aren’t bound anymore. And then down between his legs, where he’s still seated on John’s softened cock.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” John says. Breathless, Chris now notices. Raw-sounding, and still amused. Though it surprises him when Chris lifts a trembling hand, wipes off a drop of sweat that’d been beading at the point of his chin. He pauses and then leans over, deliberately, both of them groaning as their bodies shift around each other, and cradles his hands around Chris’ head because Chris can’t keep it from lolling long enough to look straight at John. “I meant, I’m—we’re—there’s an opening.”

Chris blinks.

“I’m hiring. We’re hiring.” For the first time, John looks uncertain of himself. “Look, like I said, it’s a working estate, and I need a new steward. We’ve got a problem with our knights—they’re not vampires, just undead, but they keep wandering off. Also my son has this habit of bringing home werewolves, and I think his fiancée’s going to kill him if he picks up another one.”

Chris blinks again. “So…you want to get rid of the werewolves?”

“What? No, the ones who are already here, Lydia’s fine with them,” John says, wrinkling his nose. “I just want Stiles to stop _finding_ them. At least till they’re married and it’s not my problem where to find the spare bedrooms for them.”

“Oh,” Chris says. He swallows to wet his mouth, and to try and force himself to think. For a couple seconds, he honestly thinks he might have completely forgotten how. “Well, you could—but I have a daughter.”

John blinks. “Oh?”

“She’s…at boarding school,” Chris says, grimacing. “Which is almost finished. I was on my way to pick her up. Probably how you got up on me.”

“Well…there’s a room or two left, if we move him over…” Then John shakes himself out of that contemplative look, and returns his attention to Chris. “So you’re taking it?”

“The job?” Chris says. Twists a little. “Was this a goddamn _interview_?”

That damned grin comes back on John’s face. He looks Chris up and down, then wraps his hands over Chris’ shoulders and holds Chris down as he rolls his hips, and even soft, that cock of his—Chris finishes trembling with John’s tongue in his mouth.

“You had to go and do it,” John mutters, sucking at Chris’ lower lip. “Goddamn little shit.”

“Couldn’t help it, you looked at me like that,” Chris mutters back, groaning, flexing his exhausted body even as it complains. “All right, all right, all—I’ll take it, John, I’ll take it— _John_. God, _please_ —”

Not that that does a damn thing to make John let go. Then, or ever.

**Author's Note:**

> Maenads traditionally _aren't_ supernatural, they're just ordinary women possessed by the spirit of Dionysus and driven to murderous frenzies, but Dionysis is an agricultural god and there are myths where he possesses the power to transform people into plants, so why not have that leak down to his followers?
> 
> Well into modern times, and even now, parts of the English countryside have kept the custom of bonfires on certain days that used to be pagan holidays connected to the farming calendar. Which were also days that evil was supposed to be stronger than usual.
> 
> This is a prequel and kinky Chris/Sheriff is actually going to be a background subplot to the main story involving the younger generation, so I guess they wanted to make sure they got a healthy several thousand words all to themselves.


End file.
